48 SUPPLE AS SPRING A relaxed pantsuit from its zipped overshirt, elasticized waist, front-sash and big big pockets to the swing of its pants. A multitude of checks in yellow-and-white or aqua-and-white polyester knit, for 8 to 18 sizes, $62. Sportdress Collections. 611 Fifth Avenue, New York, and all stores. ß ./$.--- . :?:: '> . ! , ., , '1 - :.-:::. fr' t ..-$}$, ," .t 'Q .: .}.,ß:' ;:. . ; -' '- -.....,.. .,"* .' : .j\ ,. \ 1" ....0 i' .:: ';" f! 'f.. <-<- * ..:..":--. ' VERY ðT Please add 75c for handling mail and phone orders sent beyond our regular delivery areas. , was playing popular music and gOIng around with someone who was not 'top drawer.' I don't think it was real anti-Semitism; you just didn't go around with Jews and tradespeople. When I was five or six, and my mother found out that one of my friends was the daughter of a liquor-store owner, I wasn't allowed to see her anymore." The phone rings agaIn, and Marian McPartland talks with animation. "That was my dear friend Alec Wil- der. He wanted to know if I'd done any writing today. He's incessant, but he's right. For a long tIme I pro- crastinated and procrastinated. 4 I'd start things and let them sit =- around forever before finish- ing them. Alec gave me a set of notebooks, and I jot ideas down in them in cabs and at the hair- dresser. Tony Bennett recorded my 'Twilight World,' which Johnny Mer- cer wrote the lyrics for, and it's just come out on Tony's new L.P. Johnny is another great fnend. One evening, he and Ginger, his wife, and his mother came up here, and Johnny sat right over there by the piano and sang about fif- teen songs. It waS a marvellous experi- ence." Marian McPartland clears the table, and we sit down in the living room with fresh cups of tea. "In 1943, I volunteered for E.N.S.A., which was the English equivalent of the U .S.O. I travelled all over England with the same sort of groups I'd been with, and thLn I switched to the U.S.O., which paid bet- ter and which meant working with the AmerIcans! Boy, the Americans! The fall of 1944, we were sent to France. We were given fatigues and helmets and mess kits, and we lived in tents and ate in orchards and jumped into hedgerows when the Germans came over. At first I played accordion because there weren't an} pianos around. I met Fred Astaire and Dinah Shore and Edward G. RobInson, and I worked with Astaire in a shov{ that we gave for Eisenhower. \Ve moved up through Caen, which was all rubble, and into Belgium, where I met Jimmy McPart- land. A jam session was going on in a big tent, and I was playing, and in walked Jimmy and saw me-a femdle white English musician-and the mv- God, what-could-be-worse expression on his face was clear nght across the room. But it was a case of propinquity, and in the weeks to come it was Jimmy on cornet and me and a bass player and whatever drummer we could find. We'd go up near the front and play In tents or outside, and it was cold. He annoyed me at first because he almost always had this silly grin on his face, ..$. :<:-.' . ., .H JANUARY 20. 197 3 t . but I found out that it was because he was drinking a great deal. Somewhere along the line he said, 'Let's get mar- ried.' I didn't believe him, so one morn- ing I went over to his place very early, when I knew he'd be hung over and close to reality, and asked him if he really meant it, and he said sure and took a drink of armagnac. I guess I was madly in love with him. We were mar- ried in February, in Aachen, and we played at our own wedding. "When we got to New York, early in 1946, we went straight to Eddie Condon's, in the Village. I was -- so excited I couldn't stand it. Jimmy sat in and so did I, even though my left wrist, which I'd broken in a jeep in German}, was still in a cast. \V e stayed for a while with Gene Krupa, then we went to Chicago to stay with Jimmy's family. A colonel with our outfit had given the news of my marriage to my parents when he was on leave in Eng- land. My father was stiff-upper-lip, but Mummy told me she cried a whole day I guess my not telling them first was a rotten thing to do, but we were o iso- lated. You couldn't just pick up a phone at the front and tell the111 you were going to get married. But when Jimmy finally met them, he charmed them completely. My Illother was really crippled with arthritis by then, and he Illade her laugh, and Jimmy took my father to the movies. They told me, 'He's not like an American. He's so polite.' In Chicago, I became grcatest of friends with Jimmy's daugh- ter, Dorothy, who was verv beautiful clnd just fifteen. Jimmy had been mar- ricd before, and Dorothy had been theit only child. Jimmy had sent a lot of Illone)' back from Europe, and the first six months in Chicago were spent hang- ing out and treating people. All an}- body seemed to do was drink, including Jimmy, and eventually it got to be one crisis after another. I left him a couple of times, and once I even booked pas- sage on the Queen Elizabeth. But it was all done without much thought; I seemed such a brainless person then. And I think I must have been quite awful to Jimmy. One of Mummy's dire predictions was 'If you hecome a musician, Mdrgaret, ) ou'll marry a musician and livé in an attic' And that's exactly what happened; our first place in Chicago was a furnished room in an attic. But there were a lot of nice times, too. Jimmy and I started work- ing together, and JImmy was always 111arvellous in that he was proud of me, he wanted to show me off We worked with Billie Holiday and Sarah \1 aughan and Anita O'Day, and I met Duke